


fearless and hardy of heart

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [357]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aredhel is the best, Coming of Age, Cousins, Female Friendship, Finally getting outside of mithrim, Gen, Gold Rush AU, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Peril, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29881905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Aredhel will not taste death and soil before her time.
Relationships: Anairë & Aredhel (Tolkien), Aredhel & Arien, Aredhel & Celegorm | Turcafinwë, Aredhel & Curufin | Curufinwë, Aredhel & Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë, Aredhel & Fingon | Findekáno, Aredhel & Fingon's Wife, Aredhel & Galadriel | Artanis, Aredhel & Maedhros | Maitimo, Aredhel & Turgon of Gondolin
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [357]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	fearless and hardy of heart

_Mama,_

_I dreamed you were alive again._

_It is warmer here—too warm to freeze, though of late, my cousins have tried their best. Woe touches our family in new ways, blotting out our joys._

_But you would sigh to hear me talk so—and on the first page of this little book, too, which is a joy in itself, if only because I am able to properly write to you. It was so dreadful, writing and losing little letters to you in my head. Finrod chose this for me in town, but it was Celegorm’s gift, at Christmas._

_Yes—we exchanged gifts this year. At the idea of it, I immediately felt as if I was only keeping up appearances for children I met a month ago. But don’t think I resent them! They’re dear little creatures, and I never could wish them a somber moment. It is only that I miss you so dreadfully, and Argon just as much._

_What were we like as children, Mama? I don’t think I remember. Turgon was pompous and I was wild. Fingon was righteous and Argon bookish. Such words fall flat. Was it so simple? It cannot have been._

_You’ll think I’ve no comforts at all, outside the friendship of strangers. Be assured I am glad to be with Father and my brothers, as often as I_ can _be with them—and glad to heal what I can among my cousins. You are gone, and in heaven, if heaven_ is, _I trust that you understand what sad souls they are, and not wholly through their own faults._

 _I trust that you know, too, that I was almost happy when Celegorm gave me this book. Then, before I fell asleep, I cried a little. I feel you beside me—almost. Always,_ almost _is the ache. At any rate, that was the end of Christmas. The attack came after. I shan’t spend much paper detailing the horror of it. We were victorious, and we live. Turgon was a little hurt, but his arm is nearly mended, now. Fingon has never forgiven himself for not saving poor Argon. He forgets how often he has saved the rest of us._

 _Thus—I cannot distrust his desire to save Maedhros. I cannot distrust anything that is so entirely, utterly_ Fingon _._

Fingon is in the storeroom. Aredhel finds him because she has spent an hour looking. She was only looking because something is amiss with Fingon. She has seen some trouble brewing in earnest, behind his hooded eyes, these last few days.

When she finds him, he has his back to the door, facing the dark, dusty shelves that hold odds and ends of Mithrim’s tools. No more weaponry—everything like a weapon has been brought out into the open, cleaned and sharpened and made new.

Violence, made new.

“Fingon.”

“Oh, Lord. Aredhel.” He drops something—several somethings. They fall with a metallic clatter.

“Nails?” She hazards a joke she is not truly in the mood for. “Are you building a cross for yourself?’

He looks over his shoulder, squinting with rather Turgon-like irritation. “What? No.”

“I’m sorry.” Aredhel picks at a callous on her palm. “It’s just…I’ve noticed your preoccupation.”

“I have a good many invalids to attend to,” he says, gathering the nails. “Thankfully, they improve, but not without remaining worries.”

“Turgon’s arm is better.”

“Turgon is not an invalid.”

She sighs. Sometimes she wishes she could knock his head together with Celegorm’s, that they might understand one another better, and thus save her a little of the trouble of always explaining them to themselves. She has done a good deal for mankind; she had earned the right to demand a little of men in return.

“Fingon. Father told me. It wasn’t Maedhros, who tried to—take his own life.”

He braces himself against the nearest shelf, his hand bisected by the angle of light flooding in from the corridor. Fingon brought with him only a candle; it is a yard or so from him, and guttering badly. “I know that, too. That isn’t the trouble.”

“But there _is_ a trouble?” She takes a guess, turns it to an accusation. Fingon will always respond to accusations. “You’ve talked to Papa and Turgon and Finrod, I expect. You always do when there’s something on your mind. Why won’t you come to me?”

The flame takes to the proffered fuel. “There’s nothing to say, Aredhel.” Fingon replies, his braids swinging forward as he stoops to lift a gleaming trap—horse-shoe hooped, but small enough for a beaver, to Aredhel’s eye—from one of the lower shelves.

“What do you need that for?” She has him. He’ll talk now.

“Snipe.”

A bitter jest on his part, now. She heard the story of the snipe hunt—from Maedhros, in fact. “Fingon. I won’t be chased away. I will not tell a soul what you confide in me. But _do_ confide, Fingon. Let me help you. Please. A sister should.”

Turgon might still prickle, at this, but Fingon is Fingon. He gives in, his shoulders slumping slightly. “Thank you, Irisse.”

The old nickname—one she used to bar him from—makes her eyes water. “Come out of this close air,” she says. “Let’s walk. In the field, not by the lake.”

Quietly, he says, “I’ve already been to the lake.”

That’s all that passes between them until the tussocks of wind-flattened grass are rolling beneath their boots. Then Fingon says, “Maedhros requires another surgery. A serious one. I haven’t told him yet, though he’s not a fool. He must have some idea of it.”

“Is it his han—his arm?”

“No.” Fingon scrubs at his brow with restless fingers. “It’s his leg.”

“Ah,” Aredhel says, remembering how dreadfully _wrong_ Maedhros’ first attempt at walking was. “That would have been my second guess.”

“I’ve waited too long,” he says, sighing. “But if I had broken it early, the strain might have been too much for his constitution. But now it must be broken, Aredhel. It’s healed wrong, and it will cripple him for life if I don’t—if I don’t set it to rights.”

“You’ll need a brace for it, won’t you?” That would explain the nails.

“Yes. Curufin is helping.”

A little warmth blossoms in Aredhel’s breast at that. “Then it will be done right, at least. Between the two of you.”

He nods, but she can see how lost he is in his thoughts. She presses a hand to his arm.

“Time drags on terribly when we are mired in such duties. But it won’t be like this forever.”

Fingon does not reply.

“I have been thinking,” Aredhel announces, joining her two most irascible cousins at their supper in hall’s corner. Her two most irascible cousins are also, of course, her most favorite. Once the fleeting Christmas cheer was chased out by violence, the Feanorians drew in on themselves more than ever before, at least since Aredhel has been with them. She is reminded of their child-selves, like this: the strange farm-cousins who looked down their noses at the city. They have not lost the skill of pretending to see nothing and everything that happens around them. Celegorm shrugs off fluttering attempts at pleasantry, doubtless perceiving well that their only aim is to placate against further outbursts. Curufin seems utterly disinterested in Nora’s movements, even when she praises Homer, in his hearing, for his bold rescues at the lake.

“Dangerous thing, thinking,” says Curufin, as Aredhel crumbles bread into her bowl. “And not just for women. For most people.”

Celegorm is as silent as Fingon was during their walk back across the field. He has been dark and sullen since the day of the near-drowning. Aredhel almost prefers his towering rages; there is something to reach out and meet, then.

“I want my family to leave Mithrim,” she says, since Celegorm will not prompt her further.

That _does_ catch his attention. His gaze flicks up from his portion of potatoes and meet hers for an instant. Curufin leans forward, eyebrows spiking. “Leave?”

“Not immediately,” she returns sharply. “We were under attack little more than a week ago. I’ve no interest in walking out into the wilderness with naught but packs on our backs and your worst guns at our belts.”

That amuses Curufin, which is as good as confirmation of his chariness with weapons. Celegorm says,

“What do you mean, then?”

“I mean we are overly cramped here, and constantly fending off threats—real or imagined.” She moves quickly along, not desiring to identify which threats she would assign to which category. “I’d go mad, if I couldn’t imagine a different future.” Unsaid is the truth that is between their two families, buried by death and Maedhros’ losses and all the threats they face. Aredhel does not imagine that she will leave _betrayal_ untouched forever, but for now, she would rather make allies of these two.

Her friends.

“I expect you would be glad to see the back of us,” she says. “We never intended to settle shoulder-to-shoulder.” Of course, that is merely a guess—cast back to a time of which all three of them are ignorant. Aredhel was told that Uncle Feanor would obtain fresh horses and sturdy wagons; she was told also that Uncle Feanor would grant them deeds to land. But only her father and eldest brother—only _their_ father and eldest brother—were privy to the exact plans for the west. Father and Fingon would have told Mama, but would Uncle Feanor have told Aunt Nerdanel? How intricate _were_ his lies?

Such questions are too painful to consider now. Aredhel turns her attention to Nerdanel’s sons, not the selfish fears of their dead father.

“What are you asking of us?” Curufin demands, dragging his spoon through his stew.

“I am asking you to _think_ ,” she says, a trifle archly. “I don’t know how to accomplish what I want, not all at once. But surely you two have sufficient motivation to put your heads together with mine, on this.”

Curufin smiles. Celegorm heaves a sigh.

“Huan would be sorry to see the back of you,” he says, though Huan has never taken as much interest in Aredhel as Celegorm pretends he has.

“We wouldn’t go far,” Aredhel says, as if, despite the dangers of the wilderness, she could desire a home near Mithrim. To suggest otherwise would be to name the dread that chokes her when she lies awake at night, imagining Fingon’s long and lonely climb through darkness. Oh, yes. There are creatures in this world—this _near_ world—that seek her family’s destruction. Should she come to know them, she would not just wish to be held fast by the walls of this fort forever. She would wish for an early grave.

_Mother…_

Aredhel will not name that dread after all. Aredhel will not taste death and soil before her time.

She laughs a little, and eats her bread. Caranthir is cantankerous and ill-mannered, just as he’s always been, but he bakes a fine loaf of bread. “You know very well,” she adds, “That we haven’t the gold to go back East.”

Another day passes, and she learns that her sisterly pleas to Fingon have failed. Something is amiss, and yet he tells her nothing. She did not catch him in the moment of his weeping, but she knows her brother well and knows that he _has_ wept. Somewhere in their crowded life, both Fingon and Turgon find all sorts of way to slip from her sight. She must seal the cracks of time back up with her own quick wit and mournful knowledge. She must divine, by her own lights, that Fingon has quarreled with Maedhros, when delivering the news about what must be done to Maedhros’ leg.

In the wake of Fingon’s brooding brow, everyone dispatches themselves to their usual posts like clockwork. Ironic, really, how Fingon and Maedhros have coequal power amidst their respective circles in this respect, though neither of them speaks a direct command. Now, as ever when Fingon is out of sorts, Father takes up the post in the sickroom. Wachiwi’s dark eyes follow Fingon’s every move as he gingerly attends to the wounded who still languish beside the fireplace. That fire leaks smoke into Aredhel’s eyes and lungs no matter how seasoned are the logs that bank it. She has a particular loathing for it, which some might call ingratitude, after her brush with ice.

Aredhel has nothing particular to do. She looks for Estrela, hoping that Maedhros’ friend will have news for Fingon’s sister, but Celegorm finds her first. She is standing at the garden’s edge, careful not to tread on any stray onion ribbons or carrot fronds. He is coming up the main path, and when he draws near, she sees that he is considering her with a strange, sun-glaring glint.

There is no sun overhead. It is the middle of morning on an overcast day. Aredhel believes that whatever went so wrong between her brother and her cousin happened during the evening just past. She was with Turgon, then, holding a lantern while he finished a section of his wall.

“Well, Ris,” says Celegorm, hands in his pockets—another hint that he is screwing his courage the sticking place. “I’ve been thinking.”

She is glad that he is here. Sometimes—often—their kind of loneliness is the same kind. “Have you.”

“I think we should run away together,” he suggests, airily repeating a childhood scheme. “There’ll be advantages, you know. I’d be sure to nab us some of Curufin’s better guns.”

“You’re mocking me.”

He turns his head to whistle for Huan, who bounds up from the stables. “No,” he says, suddenly weary. “I’m not mocking you.”

Aredhel tosses her braid behind her with a twitch of her shoulders. “I’m out of sorts, is all,” she tells him. She can’t say it’s on account of Fingon. He understands so much of her, but not that. Never that.

At present, he grunts, which passes as agreement from him. Then he makes a great show of finding a good stick to throw for Huan, and Aredhel waits for him to tell her what is really on his mind.

When they are standing here just so, beneath the blinded sky, with spring still too afraid to lift its head from the earth around them, she feels very young. She forgets that she and Celegorm have killed, and likely will again. She forgets that they have hurt each other, or were made to, by time and their own blood. One never quite forgets all that, with the rest. With Curufin.

“You know the trading post,” he says at last. “Hithlum? I’ve been there before, but sparingly. Finrod and Beren went last, just before Christmas. Fat lot of good it did them—if I had gone again I might have gotten us a little warning for Christmas night.”

“I remember,” Aredhel answers. She knew Hithlum before then, too—if always from afar. Finrod and Fingon led a small party there on the march from the Mountain to Mithrim. At that time, Aredhel did not know that Mithrim had lost as much as she had. She was pure and white-hot in her anger. She was clean.

And she did not go with them, for she is not chosen for such things.

“If you want to get to know the outside world,” Celegorm ventures, still with that curious tightness at the corners of his eyes and mouth, “You might as well begin with Hithlum. _We_ might.”

“Have we anything to trade?” she asks, a little dubious—but her mind is already racing, sketching out what she could learn there.

“The world’s not hurting for rabbits, Ris.”

“True.” She watches one of the fort’s many crows take flight from its ridgepole roost. Prying things, crows, that have been too interested in the fresh graves in recent days. It is grisly to see the delight that carrion birds take in their work. Doubtless it is _necessary_ , but Aredhel’s heart aches to see it done so leisurely.

Snow melts, after all, and bodies are revealed by it. Bestirring herself with difficulty, she ventures,

“When were you thinking we should go? How many rabbits should we hunt and skin?”

“I don’t know.” A strange shift in mood—he is suddenly absent. Restless. Her first instinct was right, then. There is something amiss with him as well as with Fingon. “Just what you said, at supper last—whenever that supper was.”

“About leaving?”

So he was serious, about running away. Why must childhood dreams come only cruelly true?

His nose scrunches. “Makes a body restless, being cramped. And it _is_ cramped in this damned fortress. Wasn’t my first choice, you know. Hidey-holing when we’d be better off…better off setting up along shore, or something. Finding our own mountain.” He begins to walk, jerkily, in the direction of the field. She follows.

It is different, so different, than walking with Fingon.

“You know,” he says, “Because everyone knows, that my father picked the fight with Bauglir. We’d never even _seen_ the man! I still never have,” he adds, bitter and low, as if he is admitting a shameful secret. “All this for…for a ghost.”

She doesn’t know if he means the unseen Bauglir—or Feanor.

“It would be good for us to have a fresh start,” she says. Even if he plucks several names out of that _we_ , she does not, and it is her heart that matters, when it is her voice that speaks.

“A fresh start,” he says. Then he looks to the sky—for deliverance? But no, it must not be. Celegorm has never been the praying kind. He bowed his head at Sunday Mass, sure enough, but his soul lived with the mortal ones of animal-kind, however much he was made man, and their master. “Aye. We’ll need that, when we’ve done here what we must.”

She doesn’t ask what he means by that. She says, instead,

“Tell me when you are ready for hunting,” because a table has at last been set before her, and her hunger for freedom is that of animal-kind, too.


End file.
